Dear Friends,
We hope the first week of Advent has been a peaceful & fruitful one. In our attachments this week we continue to give you material that we hope will be good for reflection at this time. They include a John Betjeman poem with which you may already be familiar.
The blessing this week is ‘My Peace’ from Heavenly Peace CD. Let us pray that the Prince of Peace – the Christ-Child will bring greater peace to our world.
We started our Advent Reflections last Sunday – they continue tomorrow – see below for details.
Wishing you a good week & with our love & prayer
Meditative Reflections
at 5.30pm
on Zoom
(Sunday 3rd December – “What is God doing this Advent?”)
Sunday 10th December – “Lighting the Darkness”
Sunday 17th December – “Opening the Door of our Hearts”
Friday 22nd December – “Emmanuel”
And IN PERSON at Blessed Sacrament Church, Melbourne CM1 2DU
on Wednesday 20th December at 5.30pm
Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81933736118?pwd=SHpUWlh2Yis1MzViMGNHNmVKN2Zndz09
Meeting ID: 819 3373 6118 Passcode: 257456
And on Christmas Eve, Sunday 24th, we will have a zoomed Evening Prayer without the usual Sunday Scripture Reflection.
CHRISTMAS EVE – EVENING PRAYER ZOOM: 05:30 PM London
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88333391691?pwd=SjhrYnFBUEZndVVIMTRRTEJqRVduQT09
Meeting ID: 883 3339 1691 Passcode: 301123
ALL WELCOME TO ALL OF ANY OF THESE –
NO REGISTRATION NEEDED
Advent Feet
E Body
God, your advent feet come silently
along our noisy streets;
the noise, our ears, the silence
contain the Christ we FAIL to greet.
God, your advent feet come silently
along our noisy streets;
the noise, our ears, the silence
contain the Christ we FEAR to greet.
God, your advent feet come silently
along our noisy streets;
the noise, our ears, the silence
contain the Christ we LONG to greet.
WE WATCH and WAIT for YOU
Hidden God,
wherever you are in your own kind of space,
we watch and wait for you –
to startle us to wakeful newness
in this Advent season.
Come and trust into us
the spirit of daring and courage
to make flesh on earth
a bit of the kingdom of heaven.
Come and fulfil through us Mary’s vision
of mercy stretching to all generations,
of the proud scattered, the powerful punctured,
of the rich emptied and the poor filled,
and our lives magnifying your grace.
Come lace our songs, our shopping, our celebrations
with your mystery and strange magnificence,
and let us sense it in the small strange stirrings
of the earth and of our hearts, now and always. Amen.
Christmas
John Betjeman
The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.
The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.
Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all’.
And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.
And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.
And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?
And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare –
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
Advent is the season when we become aware, yet again that ‘the Word is always waiting to be born’.
This is the season of waiting, of longing, of promise. It is the time of inward preparation for God’s coming in ‘the inmost silence of the heart’.
It is only the inmost silences of the heart that we know the world for what it is, and ourselves for what the world has made us.
Many people today look for silence, solitude and peace. They dream of places where they can rest away from the daily hassles of living which tear them apart, exhaust them and leave them dissatisfied, wounded, bleeding and always alone. But they won’t necessarily find peace and quiet waiting for them in other places. There is a place within us where quiet reigns – the centre, our heart of hearts. There we can find him who is the plenitude of silence. But who will guide us there? We must learn the way.
Taken from Advent Reflections of Meister Eckhart, Siegried Sassoon & Michael Quoist